Now for the heroic return of the Adventures of… series. For those of you who haven't read Eragon by Christopher Paolini, I will provide a brief explanation of what has gone on before in the story. For those who have, please read The Adventures of Brom and Jeod for enlightenment.
I very much enjoyed writing the first part of it, and I am quite sure that the second will be just as funny for all concerned. I try to keep the characters (apart from Vanir in the last one) in character to a reasonable degree, and often give them more personality when Christopher Paolini is found wanting (which is to say, quite often- Jeod never had a personality at all, and Brom wasn't much better off), so working with a better author will be interesting.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, I give you… The Adventures of Brom, Jeod, Helen and Goole.
"Jeod," Brom said, sipping at his ale in a manner suggesting that a great bon mot was about to emerge from his craggy, ancient, drink reddened face, "does something strike you as odd about…" he pulled out his Tolnedran Geographical Society route map and looked at it carefully, first upside down- "Sendaria?"
I sighed inwardly, took a sip of my own drink and signalled urgently to Goole. The butler nodded, rose in his normal sedate manner, and strode to the door to our suite. I then turned back to Brom. "I really couldn't think what, my dear fellow," I said in a tolerant sort of way. When he began to ask questions, it meant that he was nearly drunk to paralysis.
"Well," Brom said, delighted that he had a willing listener (he never did when he was actually sober- which was admittedly rare)- "it is real similar to home."
I nodded in agreement.
When we had fled screaming from King Galbatorix's henchmen, on the Dragon's Wing- the most advanced ship of its day- and ended up on a whole different continent, we all expected to find something strange to our Alagesian tastes lying within it. Something like, let us say, not green fields, full of plump farms, rubicund hands, and distressingly monotonous architecture.
"Well, it's weird, isn't it?" Brom said, draining his tankard. "Like the great gods above have brain disease or sumthin' weird like that."
"Indeed so," I said. "Now Brom, I think that you've had enough to drink now, so may I-"
"Nonsense, Jeod! Nonsense! I've drank worse. You get it? Drank worse? No, of course you do!" Brom laughed inanely at his own joke.
I consider it important to add now, just so as the reader realises the desperation of our current plight, that Brom was the man who I chose to be a practical hiker, the sort of fellow who would wrestle bears whilst we all turned tale and hot footed it away from the location. Having a former Dragon Rider on your side makes you confident like that, really.
"We have been into a few scrapes, thought," I said, bringing Brom into the slightly safer territory of telling old stories. This he would do with remarkable long windedness and incomprehensibility, as would soon be proved to anyone with two eyes, a brain, and a pulse.
He blearily blinked at me. "Scrapes?" he asked.
"Yes, Brom," I said hopefully. "Scrapes."
"Oh yeah," he began, head slowly clearing. "Like when that poor kid thought I was a wolf or something."
I nodded. This had occurred one sunny afternoon a few weeks back. Our party had been tramping through strangely familiarly hedged country lanes, with our food supplies nigh on depleted. Upon chancing upon a strangely familiar looking farm house, we made a collective decision- that is to say, Brom barging ahead of us, with everyone else trailing along behind him- to beg for food in that vicinity.
Things subsequently took a turn towards the bizarre: no sooner had the geriatric rider stepped forward, a little boy ran up to him, shouting "Mister Wolf! Mister Wolf!"
We all looked at each other for a moment. Brom bent down to the little fellow, cleared his throat, looked around for reassurance, and said "Ah… hello there."
"Would you tell me a story?" the boy asked, still looking resolutely adorable. The words, however, filled me with dread. Exposing this innocent youth to one of Brom's sober stories (which normally involved Urgals, wenches, horses, beer, incest, and other such beings in un natural combinations) was slightly beyond the ability of a self respecting human being to morally tolerate.
Hope came when Brom blinked stupidly. "What?" he asked.
"A story," the little boy repeated firmly.
"Could I have your name, first?" Brom asked. "I don't recall having been round these parts for a few years."
"I'm Garion," the boy said, a trifle snootily. For a moment, he exposed a strangely familiar marking on his palm for all of us to see.
"Well, hello there, Garion," Brom said, stalling for time. "Well, I would be glad to tell you a story. But would you be so good as to direct these people here to your food storage facilities? We're sort of hungry, you see."
"Of course, Mister Wolf," the boy said, smiling gaily and suddenly noticing us for the first time. We smiled nervously, and made our acquaintances in general. Goole tipped his hat.
"Would you be desirous of a toffee, master Garion?" he asked, reaching into his coat.
"Yes please, goodman Goole!" the boy replied, hand held out eagerly.
"Very good, sir." The toffee was handed over, and, with the boy silenced, we scampered over to the larder and started looting the place.
Brom kept the boy distracted with one of his less bawdy songs- less bawdy, that is, in that it only caused a handful of grass plants nearby to wilt out of existence. "And well," said he in the end, giving a disarming smile, "little Garion, that's how the thrush gets its eggs."
On this heartwarming note, we now return to the tavern where our adorable party sat, remembering our travails, a warm feeling in our hearts.
"So, Jeod," Brom said, ordering yet more beer, "why d'you reckon that little kid thought I wasn't me?"
I have pondered this question long and hard, and have no real answer. It is, however, a perennial phenomenon; after long years of travel, whatever continent we have arrived at, Brom always gets mistaken for someone else. Presumably, every country, for reasons doubtless beyond our comprehension, has a robed, white bearded, story telling magician with an eye for some form of alcohol. Whilst this does have its advantages, especially as these men almost always are in high positions of power, it does get a little bit boring after a while.
Come to think of it, most places contain a teenaged boy with a white mark on his palm, but I digress.
At this point, we were rudely interrupted by the arrival of a new comer to our drinking table. He sat down, gave over a frankly disturbingly large pile of gold, and turned to us. "Good evening," he said, his nose twitching all the while. "Gentlemen, and lady-" and at this point he kissed dear Helen's hand with an extravagant gesture.
She giggled. I reddened.
"I must say," the man went on, "that this is a marvellous establishment."
The man, we soon discovered, was called Silk, and he managed to belie his name in absolutely every conceivable way. For one thing, he was often given to making observations of a pointlessness that would seem funny in other circumstances.
"Ah," he would say, "what lovely weather we are having," and would pause, expecting us to fall off our stools with laughter. Suffice to say that this did not happen. Unperturbed, he went on, occasionally pausing to pick our pockets and attempt more gallantries to Helen.
It would be to engage in careless understatement that we found this little man annoying in the extreme. I have long tried to think of an advantage that he had in our many later meetings, but I really cannot think of any. He was, to be quite honest, annoying, possessed of a reckless disregard for private property, utterly witless, ugly, short, and irritatingly drink proof. However, he made up for this with a remarkably redundant turn of phrase, which we will go in to at a later date.
Eventually, after a particularly asinine remark, we had all had enough of him. Our grand counter offensive soon began.
"Ah, sir, your suit is so delightful," Silk said.
"F&k off," said Brom.
"Oh," said Silk, before turning to me. "Sir, your friend has no manners whatever, and is even uglier of wording than he is of face."
"F&k off," I said, privately agreeing.
He turned to Goole. "How can you tolerate this man?" he asked in an undertone.
"May I be so bold as to ask you to remove yourself from the premises, sir?" my Butler asked.
He gave up and walked away. Helen ran away to our suite, and was never seen until next morning.
Somewhat cheered by this, we returned to our drinking.
((Sorry for the short chapter. This is just a warming up thing, I think. And please review!))